Moving right along...

Since I last updated they have:

Added a roof

Added "walls"

Added windows

And added columns

Its amazing how fast it has gone up! But I think the "slow" part has begun now...working on electrical and other "inside" things that aren't noticeable to the untrained eye.

Now that you can see a general idea of how the house looks, I will share the story about how we customized the exterior.

Basically, we started out with a different floorplan. I fell in love with this house. The second I saw this picture, I knew it was exactly what I wanted. I've always wanted shutters. And I like the "cottage" look with triangular roofs and the little roof windows.

So we went through the whole meeting process and were set to go with this floorplan (Plan 1). The price she quoted us was right within budget. Then she calls and tells us that she made a mistake with the quoted price and it was actually about $16,000 above our "top" budget. And this didn't include ANY of the upgrades we would want, or a fence, or sprinklers. And what is the point of having a house built if you can't customize it with a few "upgrades"?

So I was feeling really crushed. Trying to hold back tears in the meeting. It was not good. Then finally, we all had a stroke of genius. There is another floorplan (Plan 2) with a very similar exterior, but it can be built cheaper because it is one-story. Plan 1 had a flex room on top of the garage, but everything else was downstairs. Plan 2's flex room was on the first level with everything else. It actually ends up having more square footage than Plan 1, but is still cheaper because apparently it costs more to build up.

So here is a picture of Plan 2:

Same general idea, right? And *I guess* I can live without the cool flex room upstairs. But what I really loved about Plan 1 was the exterior. Especially that window with shutters above the garage. I told them, "I don't even care if it is a fake window, I just want a window above the garage."

So this is when our builders really proved themselves awesome. They got to work drawing up a plan that basically copied the exterior look of Plan 1, with the interior of Plan 2. Then they gave the whole thing a new name (we'll call it Plan 3!). So our house is one-of-a-kind. No one else has an exterior quite like ours. I kinda hope they will put Plan 3 into circulation, I think it would be cool if I helped "design" a new floorplan! :)

Here is what they changed:

• Add height to garage roof (rather than a sloping roof)
• Add window and shutters above garage
• Add shutters to the porch windows
• Add a HUGE window to the side opposite the garage
• Add natural wood columns, rather than your standard white columns

We were very impressed that they worked so hard to fulfill our wishlist. And the new price allowed us to get pretty much every upgrade we wanted, plus a fence and sprinkler system. We are very happy with how it is looking so far!